Smoke rises last July from rail cars that were carrying crude oil. The cars derailed in downtown Lac-Megantic, Quebec. Forty-seven people were killed.

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The Register?s Editorial

While the Obama administration has dithered over whether to allow construction of a pipeline to move crude oil across the Midwest, the numbers of railroad tank cars carrying oil have exploded, figuratively speaking. Some of them have literally exploded.

The latest was on Dec. 30 near Casselton, N.D., when a freight train pulling oil tank cars collided with derailed grain train. Though there were no injuries, two-thirds of the town of 2,400 people was evacuated as a precaution. In November, oil tank cars caught fire and burned when a train went off the rails in rural Alabama.